Song Birds and Water Fowl 



there is a world of difference in disposition 

 between this snappy little specimen and his 

 disconsolate sister, the grief-stricken, Rachel- 

 tempered pewee. If, according to the ortho- 

 dox decision, the flycatchers be not strictly 

 admissible into a bouquet of songsters, they at 

 least find their mission in serving the purpose 

 of an effective spray of green leaves among a 

 floral group, to enhance in others what is lack- 

 ing in themselves. The song of the indigo-bird, 

 which was holding forth in more open land, can 

 hardly be called good or bad, as it now stands, 

 but could easily drift into either. It reveals the 

 identity of the singer, however, by a peculiarly 

 throaty note in the middle of the phrase. 



In a grassy apple-orchard near by, a half- 

 hour's entertainment was afforded by a tiny 

 songster, Mistress Wren — that little brown 

 creature which is one of the neatest specimens 

 of concentrated happiness in feathers that ex- 

 ists — an endless cadenza. As I saw her enter 

 a hole in an apple-tree with a bit of downy 

 substance in her bill, and soon after emerge, 

 minus the same, it was the strongest circum- 

 stantial evidence that she was putting the 

 finishing touches on her summer home, in the 

 snuggest and most picturesque of castles. But 



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